Thursday, 16 May 2013

There’s no point having a story by the end of which
the reader will know who your main character is and what he’s about.

You may think that the purpose of the story is to
reveal this and that’s it’s intriguing for the reader not to be too sure where
a character’s loyalties lie. That would be wrong.

Did you have a good idea of what kind of person
Harry was before he got to Hogwart’s? Did you have a reasonable idea about
Katniss before she got to the games?

The initial part of a story is to tell the reader
the character’s values and beliefs. Once things kick off, then it’s time to
test those values and beliefs.

In some cases both of these can be conflated into
one. Thrillers and other stories where we start in the middle of things. Or the
character may be of a type that is easy to recognise and understand (the obsessed cop, the woman who really wants a baby).

In the Jack
Reacher novels we are often given a list of the main’s character’s
achievements and awards while he was in the army, and this gives you a pretty
good idea of who he is in a very short space, but mostly it helps slot him into
a particular pigeonhole.

Some genres actively welcome this sort of clichéd characterisation (although 'archetypes' might be a kinder way of putting it),
but a little more complexity is also a good thing.

Whatever it is you tell the reader about your
character in the early part of the book, it’s important that it directly plays
a part in the story that unfolds. There’s no point having a woman who’s afraid
of the dark and rescues abandoned cats if the story is about her deciding to
become a race car driver.

It may seem like a way of making a character feel
more than just two dimensional to give them diverse interests and an unclear, more
‘realistic’ narrative. That would be wrong, too.

A contrived as it might feel, the whole point of
giving a character a particular viewpoint is to bend it to breaking point.
Creating a vague, wishy-washy feeling (life-like as it may appear) is annoying
to read. But much easier to write, which is why it often appeals.

In Rosemary’s
Baby, we start with Rosemary and her husband house hunting. What we get is
an indication of how much Rosemary wants to settle down and start a family. Her
desire for that will be put to the test when she gets her wish, a baby. Meanwhile, her
husband, an actor, is shown as a consummate liar as he wangles them out of a contract
for one place so they can move into their dream home. This trait
of her husband’s is also used to test her (worth noting that since she’s the
MC, it’s her testing that interests us, not his).

What do your characters stand for? What are their
values and guiding principles? What do they believe in?

And more importantly, when is it clear to the
reader.

Your first chapter, your first scene, should be
about this. No matter what the actual events, how the character handles things
should give the reader a strong indication of what they’re about, and those
same core beliefs and behaviour should be brought into play throughout the rest
of the book.

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This is exactly what I needed to read. I'm working on a new project and fiddling with chapter one. Your post clearly defines the goals of what I need to do and what I want to do within the first 15 pages of the book. Merci Moody. (:

Cliche and archetype differ based upon frequency of usage and application. If a character is little more than either, though, I don't care if the author got me to know them. There is a heavy chance that I will give up on a book that uses them too much. Ironically, it can be severely better to only know a few salient things about a character - like the girl's obsession with freckles in A Visit from the Good Squad - than to know all of who they are. It depends where you'll take your story.